


I and love and you

by SquaresAreNotCircles



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Chin Ho Kelly and Kono Kalakaua also appear (very) briefly, Declarations Of Love, First Kiss, Fluff, Getting Together, M/M, Post-Episode: s04e19 Ku I Ka Pili Koko (Blood Brothers), lots of them - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-16
Updated: 2019-02-16
Packaged: 2019-10-29 09:07:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17805158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SquaresAreNotCircles/pseuds/SquaresAreNotCircles
Summary: He looks at Danny, and oh, what the hell, the shooter clearly knows they’re here anyway. “I love you,” he shouts, over the rapidrattatatatof machine gun fire.Danny pulls a face like he’s half a second away from pitching his gun at Steve’s nose just to have his hands free to wave at him angrily. “Seriously?” he yells back. “You really think this is the time or the place for that?”Steve grins at him. “No time like the present.”Or: Five times Steve tells Danny he loves him (and one time he doesn’t, strictly speaking).





	I and love and you

**Author's Note:**

> I was going to post this on Valentine’s Day (the 14th), and then I was going to post this on International Fanworks Day (the 15th), and then I missed both of those so now I’m posting it very early on the 16th of February (in my timezone). Happy Saturday, I guess! 🎉
> 
> This has been in the works for a looong time. To be more precise, I’ve been stopping and starting with this one (and occasionally wondering if I should give up on it entirely) ever since I watched the end of season 4, which is months and months ago by now. It struck me how in episode 18, Danny says “that’s the guy I know and love”, in episode 19, we get the famous stuck-under-a-collapsed-building episode with Steve’s “I love you too, pal” in response to Danny’s teasing and then their mutual I love yous later, when they’ve made it out safely, and by episode 20, they’ve already progressed to casually throwing “I love you” over their shoulders in the hallway. And I just. I had a lot of feelings about that, which predictably came out in fic form. This is not very canon compliant after 4.19, because I hadn’t watched much more than that when I started it, and I’m still not sure I’m happy with it even after all these months, but sometimes it’s time to let things go. Fly, my pretty little fic.
> 
> The title is from an eponymous song by the Avett Brothers. (Which is very popular in Marvel fandom because it mentions Brooklyn so much, but I hope the other Steve will forgive me for borrowing his lyrics.)

**1.**

It takes Steve a little by surprise, the first time they really say it, when that building collapses on their heads and Danny almost dies. It feels good to get it out there. It’s been true for a long time, and after coming so close to losing Danny, it’s a relief to hear Danny say he cares, that he loves Steve, even, and to be able to say it back without judgement.

That’s the first time; after that, it’s like the floodgates have been opened.

Steve hasn’t said the words to a lot of people in his is life, and even when he did say them, they always used to be something weighty, something reserved for special occasions only. With Danny, it’s almost the exact opposite. Steve starts throwing it around like it’s a sport. He enjoys the intoxicating freedom of not having to wait around for near death scenarios to share how he feels, instead tacking it onto the end of the most ordinary of sentences, whenever he feels like it.

Danny brings him take-out for dinner? Steve tells him he loves him. Danny talks about Grace’s A on her maths test? Steve tells him he loves him, and Grace too. Danny crashes on Steve’s couch after one too many drinks because he kept up with Steve on what would have been Steve’s dad’s birthday? The next morning Steve tells him he loves him, and thinks it a couple of times very loudly.

Or, like now, when Danny hands him a beer out on Steve’s lanai: “Hey, I love you, man.”

Danny looks amused as he makes himself comfortable on the chair next to Steve’s. He doesn’t give Steve shit for it, though, and that’s another reason this is all so strangely easy. “Love you too, buddy,” Danny says, clinking the neck of his bottle to Steve’s. “You even remembered to buy your own beer for once. I’m blown away.”

“I’ll choose to take that as a compliment,” Steve says, even though he doesn’t really care if it is or not. 

Danny seesaws a hand. “I’m really not sure that you should.”

Steve grins but doesn’t bother coming up with a response, perfectly content to let Danny have the last word. He sips on his beer and lets the sensations of the sunlight, the sound of the ocean and Danny’s steady presence at his side wash over him. He thinks that maybe this is what happiness feels like.

-

**2.**

Of course it’s not always quite so peaceful. Their job gets them into a lot of tense situations, like when they want to talk to a witness and someone inside the house starts shooting before they’ve even had a chance to knock on the door. In a flash they both have their guns drawn and they’re flanking the entrance, using the cover of the wall to evade the spray of bullets. Steve is pressing his shoulder to the stone, gun pointed down because if he had it raised right now, he’d be pointing it at Danny, who is mirroring his stance on the other end of the door.

He looks at Danny, and oh, what the hell, the shooter clearly knows they’re here anyway. “I love you,” he shouts, over the rapid _rattatatat_ of machine gun fire.

Danny pulls a face like he’s half a second away from pitching his gun at Steve’s nose just to have his hands free to wave at him angrily. As is, he keeps a firm grip on his weapon, which is one of the many reasons Steve feels the way he does about him in the first place. “Seriously?” he yells back. “You really think this is the time or the place for that?”

Steve grins at him. “No time like the present.”

“I think you mean there’s no time _in_ the present. You’re a lunatic!”

Steve stares at him with raised eyebrows until Danny caves.

“And I love you, too!” he yells. He sounds so annoyed about it Steve wants to laugh, and also kiss him, but that barely even has anything to do with the situation at hand, if Steve’s being honest with himself. At some point, while he wasn’t even looking, it’s become a near constant in his life.

But contrary to things Danny might accuse him of mid-bicker, he’s not actually suicidal or crazy, so he doesn’t act on that specific impulse. He forces it down, and it settles in his stomach as something bubbly. It’s brilliant and exhilarating and lifts his adrenaline high even further.

The shooting dies down. He grins at Danny, bright and wild, and jerks his head as a sign that they’re moving in. Danny rolls his eyes, but kicks the mangled door open anyway.

-

**3.**

See, the thing is – it’s fine when he says it to Danny in relative privacy, because it’s meant for Danny, right, so of course he should hear it. That doesn’t mean it’s as easy to say it in the presence of other people. Steve isn’t trying to hide anything, he’s pretty sure of that, but neither is he going to go around making love declarations when he’s talking to anyone besides just Danny. People might get the wrong idea (or, far worse, the right one).

If he had given the matter any real thought, he probably could have predicted that eventually it would slip out in a semi-public setting anyway. Perhaps it was just a matter of time. They’re at HQ, and the team is gathering around the tech table just when Danny returns from his coffee run with four paper cups and a bag of malasadas. He hands Chin and Kono their coffees before he rounds the table to stand next to Steve, dropping the malasadas and handing Steve his cup.

The first gulp scalds the roof of Steve’s mouth, but it’s worth it. He needs the boost. “Thanks,” he says. “I love you.” 

He takes another sip before he realizes his mistake. The words are close to a reflex by now, which is slightly embarrassing, because it lays bare far too much of the more guarded parts of his heart if examined by outsiders at all. The only saving grace is Danny’s response, quick and casual and delivered with a friendly slap to Steve’s back.

“Love you too, buddy.”

Kono smirks at them from across the table. It seems Steve is the only one who is even a little fazed at his own slip-up. “Should we give you guys a moment in private?” she asks. “Light some candles, set the mood?”

Danny points at her with the hand that isn’t holding hot coffee, but he doesn’t look intimidated or like he wishes Steve would have kept his mouth shut in the slightest. “Oh, is that another married joke? I have to say, it’s amazing how these still feel so fresh and original after you’ve been using them for literal years.”

“You just keep making them work,” Kono says, with an unconcerned shrug. “It’s not our fault.”

Chin looks up from whatever he’s been doing on his tablet. “Our? I’d like to be kept out of this, please.”

“Oh, cuz, don’t act like you’re so innocent.”

Danny jumps ship and sides with Kono like he’s been doing it all along. “I’m gonna have to agree with her there, Chin.”

“Guys,” Steve says mildly, “our case?” He would have been sharper about it, usually, but their banter has given his heart time to slow down to a more healthy beats per minute. The roiling in his stomach is settled now. He’s almost thankful for their distraction. 

“Of course, honey,” Danny says. Kono actually walks around the table to hit Danny on the shoulder for that and Chin shoots Steve a partly exasperated, partly amused look that Steve isn’t entirely sure what to do with.

Then Chin starts bringing pictures up on the main screen and it’s like a switch flips, so abrupt is everyone’s return to focus and professionalism. It reminds Steve that Danny is not the only person in this room he has a lot of love for, even if he’s still a case apart.

-

**4.**

Their work takes them to unexpected places, sometimes, but grocery shopping for an old lady is a new one. Her grandson was murdered, and while Danny had told her she should call them if there was anything they could do for her, Steve is pretty sure he didn’t have this in mind. But Danny still said yes – what else was he going to do? – so here they are, very slowly filling a shopping cart. Things would probably move a lot faster if they didn’t argue at least a minute about every single product they touch, but Steve is having far too much fun to suggest any kind of compromise. The only thing waiting for them at the office right now is paperwork, so there’s no reason to hurry anyway.

“Wait,” Danny says, this time, which he’s said a handful of times before during this trip. Steve hasn’t actually waited once. “What’s that? Why so many chicken breasts? This is just one old woman that needs to feed herself, Steve. She doesn’t even own a pet.”

“Chicken is healthy,” Steve counters. “It’s lean meat. Good source of protein.”

“Right, sure, Rambo. And what’s the meal plan here? What is Mrs. Davis supposed to eat with all this bland chicken?”

“Spinach and rice.”

Danny waits a beat, like he’s hoping Steve will offer more. 

Steve does not, because he expected this exact sequence of events.

“And?” Danny prompts impatiently.

“A little salt, maybe,” Steve says, face carefully straight. “That’s it.”

Danny shakes his head like he’s lost all faith in the world. His ubiquitous hand movements go a little choppy, which is just how Steve had hoped he would react. “Steven, listen to me. I’m only saying this because I love you: that’s the saddest damn meal idea I’ve ever heard, and I can’t let her eat that. My grandmother would personally return from the afterlife to slap me. All that stuff, dry? It’s making my taste buds cry just thinking about it. I’m getting Mrs. Davis something better.” He snatches one of the packages of chicken breasts from the cart – but leaves the other one, Steve notes with amusement – and stalks off, back in the direction Steve just came from with his choice of meat.

“Love you too,” Steve half-yells after him, just to be a dick about it. He gets a dismissive hand wave in response that Danny doesn’t even bother turning around for. It might be for the best, because this way he can’t see how much Steve is grinning like a maniac.

There’s someone else who does, though. He grows aware of her as she brings her shopping cart to a stop right beside his. “Hello, Commander,” Rachel says. “Fancy seeing you here.” 

He’s man enough to admit that he startles a little, despite the half a million dollars in tax payer money that went into his highly specialized training. It never prepared him for supermarket ambushes by his partner’s ex-wife. “Rachel,” he says, and hopes his smile doesn’t look as guilty as he thinks it might. He doesn’t have anything to be guilty for. “Hi. How are you?”

There’s a funny look in Rachel’s eyes. If he didn’t know better, he would call it embarrassed. “Fine, thank you. You’re well too, I take it?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Steve knows he should be saying something else – _anything_ else – but his mind is completely blank. This is like when he was a little kid and his mom caught him with his hand in the literal cookie jar, except this time there is no jar and Danny always insists that Steve is the cookie.

Rachel saves him, after a beat of excruciatingly awkward silence. “I’m surprised to run into you here. If I’m not mistaken, this store is not exactly in your neighborhood.”

“Oh, no. Danny and I, we’re, uh, we’re working.”

Rachel raises her elegantly shaped eyebrows. “I see. Should I keep clear of this store for the next few days?”

“No, it’s not like that. You’re completely safe to shop here.”

“Ah.” Rachel glances down at her own cart and Steve gets the distinct impression that he’s not the only one who’s almost choking on the awkwardness in the air. That just makes it all so much worse, because there is no reason it should be this weird for Rachel unless she suspects something he really wishes she didn’t. “Daniel always said I didn’t understand his job,” she jokes. He hopes she’s joking, anyway.

“This is a special case,” he lies, because he doesn’t trust himself right now not to mess up if he tries for a longer, more accurate story about how they ended up here.

Rachel nods. “Right. I’ll leave you to it, then. Good luck.” She glances in the direction of the aisle Danny disappeared into and Steve automatically does the same. He pathetically hopes to see Danny appear, waving something wildly unfit for an old lady’s diet and budget, like a steak. “With everything,” Rachel adds, right before she leaves. 

Steve watches her go and feels both immensely relieved and more scared than he’s been in a while. That means something, if your day job is getting shot at.

“Hey, what’s got you so transfixed?” Danny is back, his arms full of stuff he drops into their cart so fluidly that Steve doesn’t even get a chance to look at it. He could grab something and read the label aloud with his own commentary attached, like he’s done the entire time, but he’s a little distracted.

“I uh, ran into Rachel.”

Danny raises his eyebrows. They’re not as elegant as Rachel’s, but then he also does it with somewhat more force. “Jesus. What’s she doing here?”

“Apparently this is her local supermarket.”

“That actually makes sense. We’re not that far from Stan’s mansion.” Danny gives his head a shake and reclaims his earlier position as designated shopping cart driver. Steve argued about that when they entered the store, but now he lets Danny have it. “Ready for the pasta aisle?” Danny asks.

“Yeah.”

Steve trails after Danny and debates whether or not he should tell Danny that he possibly just outed him to his ex, despite there not even technically being anything to out, as far as Steve’s aware. He doesn’t particularly want to bring it up, but he can’t let Danny walk into his next meeting with Rachel blind either. That would make him a terrible partner and on top of that a bad friend. 

“I think she heard me tell you I love you,” he settles on, eventually. It’s good: straightforward and factual, and Danny can make up his own mind about what it means.

Danny stops and turns to him, but it might just be because they’ve reached the pasta aisle. He doesn’t start ranting, like Steve had half thought he would. He just sounds mildly curious. “She did?”

“I think so.”

“Well, at least that means now she’ll know it’s not one-sided.”

Steve jams his hands in his pants pockets, because it’s either that or grab onto the nearest object to steady him, which would be even less subtle. “What?”

Danny takes two different brands of fusilli from the shelf and starts comparing the backs. There can’t be that much difference. It’s dry pasta. “I may not talk to Rachel a lot if I can help it, but Grace always fills her in on everything,” Danny tells the tiny corkscrews.

“Like -” Steve starts, but he can’t find an ending to that sentence that doesn’t sound needy. “Uh, like what?”

“Like how much she and I both love uncle Steve, apparently. Rachel brought it up once.”

Steve really, really wants to ask how the hell Rachel brought that up in casual conversation and what Danny’s response was, but he can’t find the words.

While Steve’s mind is elsewhere, Danny has decided on his preferred fusilli brand. He puts it in their cart precisely on top of one of the things he dropped into it earlier, which strikes Steve as highly suspect. 

“What’s that, under the pasta?”

Danny sighs, but nudges the pasta out of the way so Steve can take a look. “Cookies. She needed some. Chocolate chip.”

“She didn’t _need_ cookies. Nobody _needs_ cookies.”

Danny throws his hands in the air and leads Steve to the next item on their list while passionately defending his unilateral decision to add cookies. Everything is right with the world again.

-

**5.**

Steve has always been a man of actions rather than words. Taking a bullet for someone comes far easier to him than _telling_ a person how he feels. That leaves him bumbling and unsure and with an itch to punch something, to work out the nervous energy that the risk of pouring his heart into words sets coursing through his veins.

Right from the start, it’s different with Danny. Danny unleashes a waterfall of words even on his quiet days, and that somehow makes things easier, both because he knows Danny puts up with too much of his shit too flinch away at this, and because what’s three more words, buried under a dictionary’s worth of them? Danny talks enough that Steve never has to worry about leaving an uncomfortable silence in the wake of too much honesty.

The flipside of it all, of how easy it is to tell Danny he loves him, is ironically that it’s become a little difficult to tell Danny that he _loves_ him. As in, wants to spend the rest of their days together, wishes he could wake up to Danny’s definitely-not-a-morning-person face every day, would happily let a dog shed all over his house if it brought Danny joy, _loves_ him. Some days it’s like he could buzz out of his skin with a want and frustration that he’s not sure how to convey, even to the person who knows him best in the world and who he trusts with his life. 

Other days, he thinks he could probably die a happy man with just the way things are. They’re the days where Danny comes over with the kids and Steve gets to cook for them or Kono convinces Danny to go surfing with the rest of the team or they spend the night at home, just the two of them, sipping beer and sharing space in such a way that they happen to bump elbows and knees and hands from time to time. Every once in a while, if Steve plays his cards right, they’ll end up cuddling on the couch.

Tonight is one of those where Steve gets an unexpected royal flush. They’re watching some old college basketball games at his place when he decides to try his luck. It starts with an arm he flings over the back of the couch, sprawling and pretending not to realize that his hand is almost touching Danny’s shoulder now. Then Danny gets up for more beer and when he gets back, he happens to be sitting just a little closer to Steve than before, which Steve knows because Danny’s neck is now almost in the crook of his arm. Earlier it was near his wrist.

He shifts when he takes the cold bottle Danny offers him, dropping his arm when Danny settles in, so it’s not a big deal – it’s just part of making themselves comfortable. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with the way Danny relaxes into it, either, leaning his weight against Steve as much as the backrest.

Steve slouches down a little to make the curve of his body more comfortable for Danny to fit into. “I love you,” he says. He keeps his eyes on the tv screen, but his heart picks up speed like it hasn’t in a long time at saying those three words. They taste like a confession, which is an odd layer to the beer.

Danny settles his head against Steve’s shoulder and pats his thigh. “Love you too, pal.”

It’s exactly what he wants to hear, but said exactly the way he doesn’t want to hear it, not right now. He takes it gratefully anyway, watches most of the game, and pushes the dawning knowledge that he can’t go on like this forever down for a little while longer. He only gets distracted every once in a while by the fact that Danny’s hand never leaves his leg, not even when he uses the other one to complain about the referee.

-

**+1.**

When he finally can’t take his own silence anymore, he deliberately picks a day when they’re at Danny’s place for once, so he’ll have an escape route if things go south. He waits until there’s a commercial break in the movie they’re watching, as planned, and then prefaces it all with, “This is going to sound stupid.”

Danny, who’s been shooting him speculative glances all evening and has probably been waiting for the badly hidden words to spill out, grabs the remote from the coffee table and mutes the woman trying to sell them toothpaste. “Try me,” he offers.

So Steve turns to face him on the couch, surreptitiously dries his nervous hands on his own pants, and does. “I like you.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“I mean it.”

Danny peers at him in confusion for a moment, and then falls back on his default reaction to anything Steve says that baffles him, which involves a lot of gesturing with his hands. He’s still holding the remote, which now runs the risk of accidentally being flung across the living room. “I know, Steve. I like you, too. You love me, I’m the light of your life, this is all old news-”

“No, Danny. I _like_ -like you.”

“What,” Danny says, distinctly dangerous in how flat it is.

Steve really hopes he looks determined, or at the very least imploring, and not just like he’s pathetically begging for Danny to get it.

Something flashes in Danny’s eyes. His mouth drops open, as if Steve needs any more excuses to look at his lips. “You- Are you serious?” 

He nods. Words seem like an unnecessary complexity.

Danny nods too, but more like he wants Steve to stop doing it than like he’s agreeing. He waves the tv remote around like he’s Harry Potter’s American cousin. “Okay – are you actually in fourth grade? You _like_ -like me and that’s the way you decide to tell me? Where’s my note, Steve, so I can check a box telling you if I’ll go with you to the junior prom, yes or yes with a smiley face?”

“Danno,” he says, and there might be a hint of a whine in his voice, but he’ll deny it to his dying day. “What else was I supposed to do? I’ve told you I love you too many times to count.”

“How about – and I understand that this might be _too easy_ for that ridiculous brain of yours to come up with, but still – how about letting me know you meant that non-platonically? Romantically, sexually, unconditionally and irrevocably, whatever?”

Steve finds himself dropping an arm along the back of the couch, moving closer to Danny almost without realizing it. “Okay. Yes. All of those.”

Danny’s lobs the tv remote at the empty lazy chair a couple feet away just as much on autopilot, it seems. The remote bounces once, but doesn’t clatter to the floor, and Danny didn’t even have to move to get rid of it. Danny’s a genius. 

He’s also clearly calmed down a lot, even while he still pretends to hold on to the last shreds of indignation. “What, you love me whatever? That’s just melting my heart, Steve. Stop it, before you have me swooning.”

“Swooning is good,” he says, which makes Danny pull a beautifully annoyed face. “I warned you it was going to sound stupid.”

“Yeah, well. You’re lucky I like-liked you already, or this could’ve been a serious setback.”

“I do feel very lucky right now,” Steve admits. It’s probably another thing that sounds dumb, but that’s okay, because so far Danny doesn’t seem to mind if Steve goes a little stupid over him. To drive home his point (and before Danny can start talking again), he leans in and kisses Danny.

Danny still doesn’t seem to mind. In fact, if the way he grabs at Steve’s shoulder and lets out the softest, smallest whimper Steve has ever heard is anything to go by, he seems to do the opposite of mind. It has Steve pressing closer for more – of this, of Danny, of _everything_.

When the kiss ends, Steve still has his arm on the back of the couch and Danny is still clutching Steve’s shoulder. They’re locked together, sharing their own little universe. Steve can see the colorful flickering of the tv in the corner of his eye, but he has no desire to turn his head and look. 

“Hey Steve,” Danny says. He’s smiling – smiling after their first kiss – and Steve’s heart beats a steady rhythm of _loveyouloveyouloveyou_ in response. “You know what?”

“What?”

“I love you whatever, too.”

Steve hides his face in the crook of Danny’s neck as he shakes with laughter, just because he can.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! By this point I'm kind of perpetually behind with comment responses (sorry!), but they are coming, and hearing what you think is always awesome. ❤
> 
> I'm on Tumblr as [itwoodbeprefect](https://itwoodbeprefect.tumblr.com), or with my exclusively H50 (and mostly McDanno) sideblog as [five-wow](https://five-wow.tumblr.com).


End file.
